She Said 'Yes'
by But I Have Promises To Keep
Summary: 21 days. That's how long Mal Fallon was in a trauma-induced coma. When he wakes his memories are scarce…but while he was asleep his mind created its own world. A world where he's happily married to his partner. But what happens when he wakes up, and can't figure out what's real and what's not?
1. Chapter 1

**So I know I have my other story to work on, but hosestly had to post this. I couldn't stop thinking about this until I got it down, so I ended up writing at about two in the morning O.o. I just started reading a new book and it used this PoV, so I thought I'd try this. This is also the new romance story I've been planning (since a lot of people keep asking me when I'll write another romance) so…enjoy I guess. Let me know what you think so far, tell me any thoughts you have or whatever else!**

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_"Let me guess, you want to know why I tried to kill myself?"._

These were the first words that came out of Mal Fallon's mouth as I approached him. I was a college student at the time, studying to major in English. I was going to be a writer. I planned on writing sports columns, something you wouldn't expect by looking at me. I didn't have that look about me that suggested I had once played sports myself.

I stumbled upon Mal Fallon one day in my junior year. It was hot, and a few guys from my college were playing baseball in a field by my dorm. Being someone who grew up playing softball with my Dad, I headed in that direction to watch for a while. Not planning to stay long, I didn't sit down on the bleachers; and instead went to the chain-link and watched with my fingers between the metal links. A boy around my age who was waiting to bat saw me, his eyes immediately drawn to my short skirt. I glared at him, but he saw this as an invitation to come over.

"Haven't seen you 'round here" he said. He was chewing gum like a cow, and with him he brought the stench of sweat. He had a heavy southern accent. "You got a boyfriend out there or what?".

"I just came to watch" I said "I write for the school newspaper, the sports section. There aren't any games coming up, and I need a story".

He smiled, showing off the huge wad of gum in his mouth. Had I not grown up with a younger brother, this would have disgusted me enough to leave without another word. "If you need a story, right there's one". He nodded to a point behind me.

I turned around to see an older man, in his early sixties maybe, sitting in the bleachers. I knew him very well, or at least I thought I did. His name was Malachi Fallon. I'll get into how I know him later. "He played?" I asked, slightly suprsied.

"Nope, he's a cop. Came and talked to my class today; him and his wife. I'm in the Criminal Justice major. Told us an interesting story, he did".

"Uh-huh" I said dully. If he told a story, I had probably heard it before.

"He was a cop, and his wife was an FBI agent" the boy goes on.

"Uh-huh" I said again. I knew this already.

"He tried to kill himself"

"What?". Now that was something I had never heard. I turned back to him, I had never heard anything of the sort before. Maybe he didn't want me to know. "Why?" I asked.

"To save his wife. I reckon it's sweet, ain't it?" he said, clearly happy to find something to talk about that I was interested in.

"Yeah…real sweet" I agreed, but I was barely listening. I was still staring at Mal. I looked quickly back to the boy. "Do you know what happened exactly?".

The boy smiled, leaning into the fence. I could smell the rubbery scent of his gum. "Why don't you go ask him yourself?". And then he ran off, for it was his turn to bat. I stayed put. Ask him myself? How does one start that conversation? But I ended up climbing the metal steps of the bleachers. I tried to make myself look more presentable as I walked, just like I did when I had to interview anyone. I straightened my shirt and blouse and fixed my dark brown hair so my eyes, which many described as "pretty", would be more noticeable. Mal looked up at me and smiled as I approached, and I smiled back. That's when he asked the legendary question:

"Let me guess, you want to know why I tried to kill myself?".

He must have known I'd find out eventually, and was literally waiting for me to ask. I awkwardly said yes. The semester was ending, and I needed a term paper to turn in. An interview would be the easiest way to do it, for then there were less words I had to come up with. I asked him if he minded if I recorded our conversation. He said no, and I pulled out my tape recorder. It was a old, cheap, little thing; but I used it when I thought conversations would last a long time so I didn't have to write. I didn't think this would take long, and I had a pen and paper in my bag, so I don't know why I used it. Maybe I wanted to preserve his voice, the way it changed durning this surely-emotional story. So I pressed record, and he told his story. I was a good audience, and was genuinely surprised at how the story went. I was a little angry Mal kept this information from me for so long, and annoyed that I didn't even know he was coming here today; but as soon as he started talking his voice seemed to take me away from all this. Afterward I thanked him, and we said goodbye with a hug; one a parent would give a child. I felt like my life had changed after I heard everything he said, and I brooded over it several days until I had the courage to sit down and listen to the recording to begin my paper. This is what I wrote.

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It was late summer. Things were slow around the San Fransisco police department. Mal was in his early thirties, and things finally started to be slowing down. The past two years he had spent chasing killer after killer with his partner, Natara Williams, and it was nice to take a breath. No crazy killers, no race againt the clock. But still, something bothered him. His partner was getting married. He was happy for her, but this still ate away at him. He loved her.

But he swallowed any thoughts he had about her. If he really loved her, then he should want her to be happy…right? And if happiness for her came with another man, then so be it. He wasn't going to be the one to create even more confusion for her in her life. She had enough of that already. Even so, it was hard for him when she came in that fateful morning, an engagement ring sparkling on her finger. Natara was never one to love things that shimmered and sparkled, and for this reason none of this even seemed real.

"'Morning" she said as she walked in, yawning. For a brief second Mal could see her perfectly straight teeth, the product of her years of suffering with braces. Instead of a greeting, he nodded.

A minute later Blaise Corso, a blonde woman who was known for always getting the job done, came by. "You guys got anything to do?" she asked on her way out the door. Mal and Natara followed to continue the conversation.

"Nothing yet" Mal answered "Things have been too slow, it almost boring".

Natara shot him a dagger-sharp look.

"Well, I got a bank robbery, with hostages. Wanna come?" she said with the air of asking someone to go on vacation with her.

Mal Fallon should have said no.

But he didn't. He said yes. And so did Natara.

Now I won't go into the details of how Blaise ended up desperately trying to negotiate for Natara's life as she yelled into a megaphone from the ground. Or why Natara ended up with a gun to her head, as she had taken the place of a hostage so they could go free, while she stood on top of a five-story building. But I will say it was Mal Fallon who came to her rescue. He had used a nearby fire escape to climb onto the roof a neighboring building, and was planing on shooting Natara's captor from there. But he was spotted. The robber went to the edge of that roof, so if Mal shot him then they would both die, and dared him to make a move.

Then he said "Jump you pig, jump off that roof if you want to let this little lady live. End your own life if you want her's to go on!".

So Mal asked him if he was serious.

"No!" Natara had cried "Don't do it, Mal!".

The robber shook her roughly to shut her up, for he was holding her arms down to keep her still. "Do it, 'Mal'" he said tauntingly, using the name Natara had just called him mockingly.

"So if I jump—" Mal yelled above the wind. I can imagine how hard it was to hear him with the distance of the two buildings "—You'll let her go? She goes free, she doesn't get hurt?".

I guess, to the robber, this sounded like a good idea. His adrenaline must have been pumping, and he must not have accounted for the cops waiting on the ground below. This, of course, was stupid of him. How could he forget about Blaise? She was still yelling at him through the megaphone after all.

"Sounds good to me!" the robber yelled back.

So that is why Malachi Charles Fallon tried to kill himself. He jumped. Natara went free. But his story didn't end there. Mal Fallon lived. His story went on. He wouldn't wake for another twenty-one days, for he was in a trauma-induced coma, but that didn't mean his mind didn't make up a story for him.

This is not the story her told the class he and his wife visited that morning. What they told was only part of it, only the part about the robbery and Mal's recovery.

He didn't tell me the story about his recovery until much later. Instead, he told the story that his mind told him. And in that story, he was married again. Not to his ex-wife, Sandra, but to his partner.

In this story, he was married to Natara Williams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Just as a heads up, I probably won't be uploading anything for the next few days stating soon. I'm going on my first vacation EVER! (can you tell I'm exited?) and might not have Internet access. So if I don't update or review anything, that's why. **

**Sorry for any confusion! I forgot to edit in review replies: **

**mozzi-girl: Oh my gosh, really? That means so much!**

**Glitterila: Thanks a lot!**

**diamondsintherough: Thanks a lot! **

**MusicalMajesty: Thanks so much! **

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Now, let me say, that I do not expect you to believe anything that I write. Many of you will probably shrug it off, say it's fiction and forget about it. I didn't even believe Mal at first, and believe me when I say I'll beleive just about anything. Only if you sat beside me on the hot bench at the end of that school year could you have looked into Mal's eyes and known that everything he said was true. Many could argue that the reason he looked this way was because he believed what he said was true, but those people would be ignorant. Because what Mal saw caught up to him later.

Still, that part comes later. I won't start at the end, because that makes no sense. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before I said goodbye to Mal that day I encountered his wife. I knew her also, just as much as I knew Mal. She's the reason Mal was on those bleachers that day; she had forgotten something in the classroom she had taught in and had gone back to get it. Mal was waiting for her. They were there on behalf of the SFPD to talk to the class about their future careers. She also had never breathed a word of this story to me. As I hugged her goodbye, I could see both her wedding band and her engagement ring on her finger. I had seen them before, but this time how they looked really stuck with me. The reason this stuck with me was becasue I remember her ring as being fairly plain. Yes, it had the same embellishments as a normal ring, but was slightly plainer than most. If you recall, Mal said that Natara was never one for things that sparkled and shined. So I thought to myself, if this were true…who says everything else wasn't? Before I wrote this I looked up everything Mal told me. Malachi Fallon was indeed in a coma for twenty-one days. He did indeed marry his partner not long after waking up. There were other things that were also true, but I'm once again getting ahead of myself. Those things didn't happen until years after Mal's coma.

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Imagine, if you will, that one day you wake up from a long sleep. When you wake up, you see the world has changed. You're married to the man or woman of your dreams, and everything seems right with the world. Do you accept it, leaving your old life behind? Or do you challenge it, making your loved ones question your sanity?

Mal Fallon chose the former. When he opened his eyes, he found himself with a little girl lying on his chest. That girl's name, he later learned, was Sunny. Sunny Fallon. An odd name. She was only three, the age that most parents look back on fondly once their kids have grown.

Anyways, he woke up, and there on his chest was a little girl with dark brown hair; sound asleep and sucking her thumb. And he was holding her, holding her close to his heart as he sat. The girl must trust him, because if he let go of her she would surely fall to the ground. So what did he do? He pulled her closer. He didn't want the little girl to fall. As he did so the little girl stirred, she took her thumb out of her mouth and looked up at the man holding her.

"Daddy?" she said.

Daddy. Mal didn't remember this girl at all, let along being her father. Where was this girl's mother?

This question was answered almost as soon as he thought of it.

"Mal, did you take Sunny to pre-school?".

Mal whipped around so fast he almost dropped Sunny. Of course this didn't really matter, as Sunny was already wiggling out of her father's arms. The reason Mal whipped his head around, was because the voice that called for this little girl sounded just like Natara. And sure enough, when he looked behind him again Natara was looking down at the little girl who had just ran up to her, her hands on her hips.

"I don't want to go!" little Sunny whined.

"You're going to have to go eventually" Natara grumbled. She looked up at Mal. "You were supposed to take her! We can't put off sending her forever!".

You can imagine how Mal reacted to this. He reacted just like anyone would in his situation, letting out a huge "What the hell is going on here?".

"Mal!" she said, almost scoldingly as she covered Sunny's ears. "Language!".

You can imagine that Mal's jaw dropped. I would be surprised if it didn't. "Sunny, why don't you go upstairs and play?" Natara suggested as she took her hands away from Sunny's ears. She did as she was told.

"What has gotten into you?" Natara snapped as soon as Sunny's footsteps faded as she went upstairs. "You didn't take her to pre-school, you swore in front of her…did something happen?". She tilted her head to the side a little, clearly concerned.

Of course the answer to Mal's question was: everything, everything is wrong. But what use would it be to point out that everything around him can't be real? "Nothing" she said instead.

"Are you sure?".

Sure? Of course he wasn't sure. He was married obviously, but had no recollections of a wedding. He had a three year old child, but couldn't remember any of her life. But, still deciding to go along with it, Mal lied once again. "Yes, I'm fine".

I'll tell you now that Mal did play along. He did so his whole life. He had another child, a boy named Benjamin. With it came doubt for him, fear that he would become the sort of dad that his own father had. Even Natara was afraid, fearing bringing another child into the terrible world she saw every day. But in time the two children grew up. They moved out, went on with their own lives. From the way Mal spoke of them, I was under the impression that they both went on to live happy lives. Both Mal and Natara lived to reap the benefits of old age. And, just like any cheesy romance novel you might read, they died in their sleep. They both took their last breaths in each others arms. Mal was eighty-three.

But Mal Fallon didn't really die; and neither did Natara. For in a little hospital in San Francisco, a still thirty-four year old Mal Fallon opened his eyes.

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**Please review?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey guys, I'm back from vacation! The entire time though, I could not stop thinking of Cause of Death. I was at the beach with a friend for the weekend, and we saw a marina (which made we think of several volumes) and while in a shop I found mugs that had some of the characters names on them. (I found myself looking for everyone's names, but I couln't find Mal or Natara). It's official, I'm completly obsessed XD**

**Anyways, I hope to finish this story in maybe one or two more chapters, and hope to update my other story tomorrow. I was going to update that one today, but for some reason I can only write for some stories at certain times. Like I can only write this during the day, while _Cross My Heart _can only be written at night. Anyone else like that? **

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Mal could have relayed all the details of that 'second life' that he lived. He could have told me in vivid detail how he taught Sunny how to ride a bike. Or how Ben, on his first Halloween, insisted on dressing up as a cop when he went trick-or-treating, then held onto Natara's leg the entire time. It was too authentic sounding to be made up. All of it.

You can imagine how confused Mal was when he woke up. Wouldn't you? He had defied death again, and he was a young man once more. He was given a second chance. He didn't remember jumping from the building, in fact, he didn't remember anything from two weeks previous to the robbery. He had missed almost a month of life in addition to that. So when he woke up, in pain from several healing broken bones I might add, he was beyond confused. And what do we, as human beings, naturally do when we're confused? We reach out for something, anything, that we know to be as safe and framilar. We reach out, grab it, and don't let go until we're sure it's safe. And that's exactly what he did. He looked around the room full of people, some doctors, some friends who heard he was finally waking up, and his eyes locked on the person closest to him. I think you can guess who it was.

Natara was at his side, looking down at Mal and smiling with such happiness that it lit up her face. Mal tried to ask her to please, if she would, explain what the hell was going on; but the words barely escaped his lips.

"I can't hear you" Natara said softly, leaning in closer. Her breath was warm; and at that distance Mal could practically feel the life radiating off of her. Her cheek was only inches from his face, and she was trying to hear his whispered words. But instead, Mal kissed who he presumed to be his wife on the cheek. He must have thought this would be reassuring to his wife, show her he was going to be okay better than any words since he could barely speak. Instead, she jerked away as if electrocuted.

"Mal…What…?" she stuttered, confused. The situation might not have been so bad, had a certain Defense Attorney not been in the room. Natara had made the mistake of bringing him along; they had been spending the day together when she had gotten the call that Mal was waking up, so she figured she might as well bring him along. Seeing this, Oscar, who was close to the door, slipped out. Natara spotted him, and leaving Mal's side, she ran after her fiancé. Several minutes later she returned.

"He's gone!" she said to someone in the room. Mal didn't know who; the world was still rather hazy. But what wasn't hazy was what Natara said next. She whipped around, her eyes locking on the near comatose man before her, and she asked "Why?".

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That 'why' contained many things, not all of them questions. There was a fair amount of _"Why would you do that?"_, and a little bit of _"You ruined my life!"._

A few days after this Mal would find himself still trying to put together what happened, and Natara would find herself chasing after Oscar. But for her it was too late. She did catch up to Oscar eventually, and tried to reason with him. But something had been lost. And it wasn't because Mal woke up. Oscar saw how broken Natara had been at almost losing Mal. How she had shoved aside any plans of getting married out the window, putting all her energy into hoping her partner would live. Their talk was civil, spoken in soft and apologetic voices. Oscar argued they couldn't get married if Natara's heart wasn't fully into it. Natara agreed. Their engagement ended that night.

Now what was Natara to do now? She had thrown the future she was about to have away with both hands, and now she was all alone. She gave up almost everything for someone who couldn't even remember that he had tried to give his life for her. But she hoped that those feelings were still there. Because at this point, hope was all she had.

Although I did not hear Natara's end of the story; Mal knew it all. After the long recovery, the confusion that followed and numerous retellings of his own story; he started to remember again. It was slow, but Natara had the patience to wait for him. Because just like Mal had been ready to give everything for her, she had done the same thing. Saying that she didn't have a choice makes it sound horrible; but it's the truth. And although it was hard for her, in my opinion I don't think Natara would have had it any other way.

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**Please review?**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey guys, just as a heads-up, I will not be reading/reviewing or anything on Fanfiction for a few days. A family thing popped up, but I should be back in a few days. **

**Anyways, now that this story is over, I hope to finish up _Cross My Heart _and then start a new story. It's most likely going to be a regular old case (I had a random idea for a killer the other day) with a little romance in it. Not fluff, just a little bit of romance, like the game. **

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I don't think that going into great detail is really necessary, because at this point I think you can pretty much guess what happened next. Two years after Mal jumped from the building, two years after his long recovery; Mal married his best friend and partner. I checked this too, and it also proved to be true. Mal Fallon was married to Natara Williams on May twenty-eighth in the year 2014. It was a small wedding, and only family and close friends were present. Some of those friends and family I know personally.

A year after that they had their first child; a girl. A little over three years after that they had a boy. Just like the life Mal had lived when he was in a coma. I know for a fact both children are happy and healthy.

Whether you chose to believe Mal really saw his own future, that's your choice. But I do. I really think his mind was trying to tell him something. That subconsciously he really did want this. And it ended up better for everyone. Before I wrote this I tried my best to track down everyone from this story. Many weren't hard, as I know them and have their numbers on my phone. Some of them are even on speed-dial. On the other hand, some I was never able to track down. Oscar Santos, for example, was one of them. To be honest though, I didn't look very hard.

Who I did find was a woman named Amy Chen; who attended the wedding on the twenty-eighth of May. She was one of those people whom I already knew. I also found Kai Kalaba, a woman by the name of Blaise Corso, former Captain Maria Yeong and several others who's names were already familiar to me. One of which was Neha, Natara's sister. It was somewhat surprising to see how their lives intertwined with each other, creating a woven blanket of stories that was impossible to unravel.

After my conversation with Mal I contacted the younger of the two Fallon children, Benjamin, who was now almost eighteen. He had never heard this story from his parents, they had kept it a secret. Mal and Natara didn't want to pressure their children into going into law inforcement; and were planning on saving the story until both children had grown.

Now, as I conclude this story, I need to say how awkward it was to write the names "Mal Fallon" and "Natara Williams". It was also was strange to write "The Fallon Children" and many other things. Why? Well, by answering that, I also answer the question of how I know Mal and Natara. The question of how my story is thrown into the mix also.

I am the little girl who used to sleep on Mal's chest. The girl who always sucked her thumb. The girl who didn't want to go to pre-school.

My name is Sonya Fallon.

But everyone calls me "Sunny".


End file.
